


i hope that you catch me (cause i'm already falling)

by pipistrelle



Category: Leverage
Genre: 'i'm not freaking out' says alec hardison who is a liar, Episode: s05e09 The Rundown Job, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, They're In Love Your Honor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:34:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29434674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: Hardison said, "I didn't want to leave you behind."Post "The Rundown Job".
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Eliot Spencer, background Alec Hardison/Eliot Spencer/Parker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 89





	i hope that you catch me (cause i'm already falling)

**Author's Note:**

> For Valentine's Day. Title from "Arms" by Christina Perri

Eliot didn't do hospitals, even when he really should, and he wouldn’t do so hot on a commercial flight back to Portland, not with his whole right shoulder and half his torso bulked up with bloody bandages. Instead Hardison took them to a place he had just off Dupont Circle. A penthouse, of course, but less lavish than his usual style, with the open floor plan he liked but thick with the dusty loneliness of an unlived-in space. It had three bedrooms, which was two more than Eliot cared about. He staggered to the nearest bed without anyone's help, collapsed onto the ridiculously high-thread-count sheets, and dropped like a stone into the sleep of the recently-shot. Thanks to the painkillers Parker had dug up from God knew where, he didn't even dream.

He woke to the creak of a footfall on unfamiliar flooring. Before his heart rate could pick up, the sense below hearing identified the step as Hardison's. It was a very distinctive sound. He'd know it anywhere, if he were blind or half-dead, anywhere from here to the end of the world.

The painkillers had worn off. A cracked rib on his left side grated nauseatingly with every breath, his head felt like a stretch of bad road mined with IEDs, and that wasn't even touching on the bullet wound. He let the pain settle like silt in a glacial lake and waited. Hardison was still, frozen in the doorway, weight unevenly distributed. His breathing was only a little calmer than it had been when he'd balanced with one foot on a pressure plate to see if his team could save him from being blown to kingdom come.

Eliot forced out one agonizing breath, drew in another. Measured. Controlled. "Parker alright?" he asked. He tried not to sound like complete shit, but some things couldn't be helped. They'd saved the goddamn world, anyway, he'd earned the right to sound and feel like shit for a few hours.

"What?" Hardison swallowed, shifted, fidgeted out of that unnatural stillness. "Oh, Parker? Yeah, she's -- I mean, you know, she's Parker. She went out an hour ago, I think to steal you some stuff."

Eliot opened his eyes, pushed himself up through a stabbing lance of pain, bit down on a grunt. The light from the hall was dim and gentle, silhouetting Hardison's characteristic keyboard-jockey slouch. Eliot had told him a million times what it would do to his spine, not like he ever listened. "Stuff like medicine?"

Hardison snorted. "Yeah, Parker's version of medicine. Hope you're hungry for chocolate eclairs."

"I don't know how you guys can eat that crap."

Hardison just looked at him, clearly so distracted he wasn't hearing a word out of Eliot's mouth, and at the same time so terrifyingly dialed in that Eliot felt suddenly sure Hardison was seeing through the flimsy barriers of flesh and bone into the locks and wires that held Eliot's battered soul together. If anyone could cobble together some burned-out fragments of the N.S.A.'s invasive spy programming and hack into a man's head, it would be Hardison. Eliot suppressed a shiver and said, "Nate call? He needs us back?"

"Nah. I mean, he called, but he said take our time. We're taking the next couple days off."

"Then why are you standin' there staring at me like we're at the National Zoo? Huh? I'm not a rare red panda, man."

It had been more of a growl than he'd strictly meant. Damn, he was tired.

Hardison took a step over the threshold, leaving the door open behind him, spilling soft gray light across the floor. He'd dressed down to pre-distressed jeans and some video game t-shirt that made him look ridiculously soft and vulnerable, and he still had that look on his face that he got right before some billion-dollar electronic security system opened like a flower in his hands. Like the next thing out of his mouth would be _I'm in_.

Not like that was a surprise. He'd hacked his way past Eliot's defenses a long time ago.

His soft, heavy gaze pressed like a hand on Eliot's heart. "Dammit, Hardison, spit it out already."

"Yeah," Hardison sighed, "yeah." He scrubbed his hands over the short stubble of his hair and for a second Eliot was distracted by the power and quickness of them, long-fingered and elegant. Rings glittered in the gloom. Hardison wore them sometimes, cheap geeky stuff mixed with priceless treasures that Parker brought him. He said, "Look, I get it, man, I do. You and Parker, you have that -- thing that I don’t have, right? That ruthlessness. That's why you were just gonna have me sit in that subway car while you got your damn fool head shot off and she ran wild through the streets with a dirty influenza bomb --"

"Hardison --"

"We're good. I'm cool, okay? It's cool. I -- look." He twisted his hands together, shoved them in his pockets. "You had Udall on the ground. And she might have still been trying to disarm it. I didn't know what she was doing, man. I went to find out. I didn't want to leave you behind."

"Hardison," Eliot said, very gently. "You don't have anything to apologize for."

"No, of course I don't! But you do! How could you -- no, no. I'm good. I'm sorry." He sucked in a deep breath, lost a battle with himself and came to sit on the edge of the bed, well away from Eliot's legs, carefully not touching. "Like I said, I get why y'all did what you did. But I just wanted to tell you, if Udall -- I can't lose you either. You know that, right?"

If Udall had gotten in another lucky shot or two. If he'd hit a lung or a major artery. Eliot had seen it all clear as day in the half-second before he'd moved, and he'd shared it with Parker: maybe he'd have bled out on the floor of the subway car, maybe Parker would have died quarantined on some obscure Army base, but Hardison would have gotten out. A broken man, but alive. He'd have gotten back to Nate and Sophie, and they'd have helped him heal, after a while, or at least move on. It all would have been worth it for that.

Eliot said, "I take the hits, Hardison. That's my job."

"You take the hits and you _get up_." Hardison's voice was rough, his eyes wet. "Your job is, you take the hits and you _come home_. But that's not even it, Eliot. It's just -- don't make me choose, okay? I need you both."

Eliot’s first instinct was to say something prickly and disbelieving, but it died on his lips. Perhaps more than any of them, Hardison knew his own heart, and he had come in here to offer it up to Eliot with both hands; no tricks, no evasions. To brush off what he was offering would be to cheapen it, and Eliot couldn’t bear to cheapen the single most precious thing that had ever been within his reach.

But he couldn’t take what Hardison was offering either, not without working more harm to them all in the end. “You and Parker can make something,” he said. “A real life. Even if it’s a thievin’ one. I won’t let you give that up. Not if I can stop it.”

“See, that’s just it, you can’t. This is exactly what I’m trying to tell you, man! I mean — listen Eliot, okay, _listen_ to me for once. Just this once.” Hardison was closer now, like he’d forgotten he was supposed to be trying to keep his distance, any distance. Eliot couldn’t quite make himself want that distance, either. Hardison leaned forward, balancing on one hand pressed into the blankets an inch from Eliot’s knee, and Eliot was so busy looking at that, looking at the way his fingers moved restlessly tapping out some phantom code even now, watching the way his ribcage moved with his breath, that he didn’t even notice Hardison’s other hand moving until his fingertips brushed against Eliot’s cheek.

It knocked the breath out of him faster than the bullet had. “Parker and I don’t have to make nothing,” Hardison said. “We have everything we need, and that’s you. Without you, it’s — there’s nothing worth that. Tell me you understand.”

Eliot’s head was spinning with a hot rush that had nothing to do with painkillers or blood loss. The worst thing was, he did understand. He understood too well to ever be able to sleep easily again, knowing that if his armor ever cracked it would shatter his family, too. And he understood what Hardison was asking with his slow electric touch, terrifyingly gentle, tracing the border of Eliot’s post-apocalyptic unshaven scruff, drifting up to tuck a lock of hair behind his ear.

It felt like Parker had taken him up to some insanely tall concrete spire and pushed him off —

Well. If he would ever trust anyone to push him off a skyscraper, it would be Parker; and if he would ever be a man worthy of Hardison’s full attention and effortless love, if he would ever let anyone tempt him to the edge of this abyss, to push him into falling as hard for these people as he knew he could -- if anyone was ever going to get him through that jump alive -- it would be Hardison. So Eliot said, “Yeah. Yes,” to both questions, the spoken and the unspoken, and he shifted as much as he could with a broken rib and shot-up shoulder, tilted his head and let Hardison kiss him.

This time there was no joke, no character bit, no half-comforting layers of plausible deniability, no safety harness, no backing out. Hardison kissed him slow and deliberate, with his whole soul; kissed him like the end of the world was already incubating in the air and water and kissing Eliot was the last thing he wanted to do this side of the grave. Only the world wasn't ending, not anymore, and Eliot knew damn well this had been growing sheltered and sometimes glimpsed in Hardison's heart since -- who knew. The first day they met, maybe. 

Eliot's chest ached like a bullet wound and like the stitching-up needle all together. He dug his good hand into the soft cotton of Hardison's stupid t-shirt, grabbed and held on like he’d cling to the good earth during a bombardment, wanting to sink into it, every nerve and muscle in his body screaming not to be torn away. They were alive, Hardison was alive, Hardison was alive and was _his_. Was asking to be his.

It wasn't a long kiss. Hardison sat back a little and looked at Eliot in a way that made Eliot want to crawl onto the floor and roll belly-up, bare his throat and open his ribs to show Hardison what he didn't need to ask for, what he already had.

"We'll talk," Hardison said hoarsely. "When Parker gets home. I'm not trying to rush you into anything, I just --" but the world had almost ended, they'd almost lost the chance. Not again. "I just needed to know you knew. You know?"

"Yeah." Eliot tried to imagine what it would be like to have a capital-c Conversation with Parker, and couldn't choke back a smile. "Yeah, man. I know."

Hardison slid off the bed and was suddenly all fidget, touching his pockets, brushing his shirt, running a palm over his hair, like a twelve-year-old trying to ask his crush to the movies, like the hardest part wasn't over. Maybe it wasn't. "Do you, uh, can I get you anything? You want juice, or some more of those sketchy-ass pills --"

"I'm good," Eliot said. It was a complete lie except in all the ways that mattered. "I got what I need. Just --" 

Hardison's hand was on the door. The light from the hall painted him in chiaroscuro, an image worth framing and hanging in the great museums of the world. At least until it was stolen by someone who knew beauty inside and out, who could see it for what it was. 

Eliot said, "Stay close, all right? No more runnin' around for either of you until I'm back on my feet to chase you down."

Hardison's smile would have put the Louvre to scorn. "No fear. You ain't getting rid of me, baby."


End file.
